Council of Peacocks by M Joseph Murphy

emblazoned on the wall
before him. It was a representation of Melek Taus: a large black
peacock in a circle of gold. Christians and Jews regarded Melek
Taus as Satan. The peacock represented pride, something the
monotheists saw as an opening to all sin. Propates, however, knew
it was simply a new version of an old power: Argus, a hundred-eyed,
all-seeing god who never slept. By learning the lessons of the
peacock, one could transcend humanity and become a God.
    The phone rang.
    “I’m busy,” he said. “Be quick.”
    “Whatever you’re doing will wait.” The voice
on the phone was familiar but not instantly recognizable. “We have
an issue with the agent from away. Lucius and the others are
meeting in the Vulture Antechamber.”
    “I’m heading there in a few minutes, anyway.”
Propates answered. “The shadows are not sitting well. The Orpheans
are about to make an appearance. Is this Otto?”
    “Tsk. No. I’ll see you in a few,
Propates.”
    The crass denial confirmed who the voice
belonged to, but the caller hung up before Propates could name him.
He pushed the button to open the elevator. The carriage was empty,
for which he was extremely thankful. The Council of Peacocks was
growing. Its membership was well into the tens of thousands now.
Members of the upper echelon had taken up residence here in
Thessaloniki; there were smaller outposts around the world. With
growth, however, came an abundance of administrative duties: papers
to sign, rewards and punishments to be meted out, initiations to
oversee. The business of trying to save the world from itself was
quickly becoming a real business.
    “If I knew it was going to end up like this,”
he whispered to himself, “I wonder if I would have answered
Wisdom’s question differently.”
    He closed his eyes and thought back to the
first time he'd met Echo and Wisdom.
    ***
    In 51 AD, Propates was a sixteen-year-old
man living on a farm in the countryside not far from Rome. He’d
never been to the city, but he knew about it. Tax collectors and
bloodthirsty soldiers came from the city. What more did he need to
know? When he married his young wife, a fourteen-year-old beauty
named Olivia, his family built an addition onto the main house.
Olivia was pregnant with their first child. The oracle who lived
nearby said the child would be a boy. In retrospect, Propates
remembered the haunted expression on the oracle’s face as she told
their fortunes. She must have seen what was coming.
    Early one summer evening, a nobleman and his
entourage passed by the farm. Like most nobles, they treated the
uneducated peasants as little more than worms. With the weight of
muscle and steel behind it, they had the right to take whatever
they wanted. In their philosophy, if you could not stop someone
from taking your possessions, you did not deserve to keep them. The
commander of the nobleman’s soldiers wanted Olivia. Propates stood
between his wife and the soldiers. He was beaten for his insolence.
While the commander raped his wife, Propates, bloodied and sore,
fed and watered the man’s horses.
    After fifteen minutes, the commander
returned and forced Propates to smell his Roman fingers. Propates
cringed at the smell of his wife on the brute’s body. But he said
nothing. He did nothing. The commander laughed and offered Olivia
up to the rest of his men. Propates remembered the look on his
father’s face. ‘Get used to it.’
    Later, after helping Olivia wash the blood
from her body, Propates snuck out of the house and into the
darkness of the fields. The open air was the only place large
enough for his fury. He knelt and pounded his fists into the damp
earth. His eyes burned with tears but he dared not scream. On the
way back to the house, he saw a woman. Her hair was long and
tightly curled, done up in the style fashionable amongst Roman
ladies of the time. In the moonlight the bared flesh of her arms
and neck appeared as cold and pale as bone. When he realized he